Omobono trudged along, past the corner of the wide Forum of Theodosius, once the centre of the city's teeming life, but now given over to the tanners and leather-dressers, for one end of it was used as a slaughterhouse and the hides had not to be dragged far to be cured; he walked on quickly, keeping to the left, and was soon in narrow streets again, where afterwards the Grand Bazaar was built, and where even in those days the Persian merchants and the jewellers, the dealers in fine carpets and Eastern merchandise, the perfumers, the Egyptian goldsmiths and the Bokharian money-changers had their homes and the headquarters of their business. Here Omobono exchanged greetings now and then with men of all nationalities except Genoese, and very few of these last were to be seen, for they kept to their own quarter beyond the Golden Horn, in Pera. But Omobono would not stop to talk, and the streets were clean here, and well kept, and the children were not to be seen, so that he could walk quickly, without picking his way. On still, and farther on; through the almost classic Forum of Constantine, past the hill on which the bronze-bound porphyry column still stands, and down on the other side, keeping the Hippodrome on his left and diving into the Bokharian quarter, as different from the last through which he had come, as that had been from those he had passed before. For then, as now, Constantinople was a patchwork of divers nations and languages and customs, and their quarters were like distinct towns,--some filthy, noisy and unhealthy, some rich and stately, some quiet and poor, some asleep all day and riotous all night, others silent as sleep itself from nightfall till dawn, and noisy all day with the hum of business or the ceaseless hammering clang and clatter of workmen's tools. Before Omobono emerged upon the little square which then surrounded the churches of Saints Sergius and Bacchus and of Saints Peter and Paul--the latter is now destroyed--he heartily wished that he had hired a horse and man at one of the street corners; but he forgot his weariness when his destination was reached, and he saw a little bandy-legged sacristan in an absurdly short cassock of shabby black and purple cloth, leaning against one of the columns of the portico. Omobono ascended the broad steps that led up from the level of the street, as though he were going in, but just as he was close to the sacristan he stopped, as if without any premeditation, and made a gesture of salutation, smiling in a friendly way. 'Praised be our Lord,' he said, in the Greek manner. 'Our Lord be praised. Amen,' answered the sacristan indifferently, for it was the custom to do so. 'Could you inform me,' proceeded the Venetian clerk, 'whether that good man Kyrios Rustan Karaboghazji is now in the church at his devotions?'